The promotion, planning, and execution required of organizers and sponsors for producing larger public gatherings such as concerts, state fairs, and the like typically involve the employment of numerous support services. An important one of those services provides for the seating of patrons. Typically, principal or supplementary seating, for example on a stadium field, often will require chairs numbering in the tens of thousands. That use of the chairs will be for a very limited interval of time, for example, musical presentations often being held for a single day.
To provide this seating, chairs of essentially universal, metal folding design are used. Having general dimensions of 171/2 in..times.391/4 in. (44.5 cm.times.99.7 cm) and each weighing about 61/2 lbs the chairs, when folded, exhibit a repeating geometry, for example in the positioning of front legs in adjacency with back legs and the like. As a component of their design, the chain, when so folded, stack, exhibiting individual stack weights in internested relationship to enhance their transportability in larger numbers. Commercial entities engaged in the rental-supply of these chain traditionally have stacked them from floor to ceiling in tractor-trailer rigs having conventional box bed trailers. Regulatory limitations, of course, are imposed upon the size (height and width) and gross weight of these rigs, for example, a limitation in the latter regard typically being about 80,000 pounds.
Procedures carried out in supplying the chairs to a user site are quite labor intensive and, at times, hazardous. Generally, a tractor-trailer rig carrying the stacked chairs is driven to an unloading location adjacent the site. Labor then is required to unload the chairs onto pallets or the equivalent positioned reasonably adjacent the trailer. Should the tractor-trailer rig have encountered a steep grade just before or upon reaching the site, the stacked chair load may have shifted to lean against the rear doors. This hazardous condition must be corrected by reshifting the load, for example, by driving the tractor trailer rig to a downward grade.
Upon unloading and stacking chairs upon pallets or, very often, conventional sheets of plywood mounted upon some form of low standoff, they are moved by forklift trucks to the edge of the user site, for example, next to a stadium field. This movement also can be hazardous should the forklift trucks encounter unlevel or hilly terrain. In the latter regard, should the load tip, it may be lost or, at best, the number of chairs to be carried per trip with the forklift truck becomes limited. The chairs then are positioned at their intended location by the labor crews.
Many concerts or similar public affairs extend to late hours. Thus, the chair moving crew again is called upon to essentially reverse the above procedure. In this regard, the chairs are folded and stacked at the side of the field upon pallets or the ubiquitous sheets of plywood. Forklifts then are called upon to move the chairs to a location adjacent the trucks. The chairs then are unloaded from the pallets and are hand stacked in the trailers. However, a next procedure is required at this point, the chairs must be counted as each stacking course is completed across the widthwise extent of the trailer. All of these activities occur late at night under highly undesirable labor conditions. Leaving the chairs upon the pallets until morning generally is found to be unacceptable, inasmuch as the chairs are subject to theft.